Bihar, India: “Eight years and I still feel like I live alone,” says Sunita Kumari*, a 38-year-old farmer from Bhagalpur in Bihar, whose husband has worked in a factory in Delhi for most of the last decade.
According to the Periodic Labor Force Survey 2023-24Male migration from rural areas has reached an estimated 112 million, with nearly 45% of the rural male workforce leaving home to work. This mass movement has shaped India’s rural villages, leaving some 30 million women like Kumari as de facto heads of families as they tend farms, raise children and navigate the economic system.
Feminization of responsibility
As women begin to assume more economic and social responsibility for running the household, the feminization of responsibility is increasing in rural India. Rather, it’s about how the burdens are shifting among women. Men migrate to urban areas to earn a living, leaving women to take on this responsibility.
According to the Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation (MoSPI), the burden of caregiving in India continues to fall largely on women. In agricultural households in rural India An estimated 23% of women People aged 15 to 59 work in the domestic sector and therefore have to devote most of their day to this work.
“Earlier, my husband used to talk about sowing or selling. But now the farmland belongs to me but the land is not entitled under my name,” says Kumari. The result was longer hours of human labor and more complex decision-making processes.
Women are expected to act like heads of households but behave submissively in public. When I visit the mandi alone, some men ask me, “Why did I come without my husband?” says Geeta Devi* from Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.
Violence and vulnerability
Violence does not disappear in the absence of men, but rather takes on other forms that are less easily understood. Women in places experiencing high levels of out-migration speak of the ever-present danger of surveillance, of being watched, gossiped about, and controlled in ways that leave little trace. “After being gone for months, he always asks me things like, ‘Where have you been?’ and “Who were you talking to?” As soon as I ask him the same thing, an argument breaks out,” says Kumari.
Marital violence is common in rural areas Exceed 30-40% [Karnataka = 44%, Bihar = 40%, Tamil Nadu = 38%]and emphasizes that violence is widespread and currently high in villages where migration rates are high.
To some extent, separation makes men vulnerable, and some worry about their wives and their social status, even if they rely on their income.
Harassment and moral policing by family members is an unreported reality in India. In such an environment, where the law is daunting and the sense of community is fragile, vulnerability becomes an occasional experience and reality follows the added burden of women.
Land and property
In rural India, land is not just property but an essential part of a person’s self-respect and security. Women in rural India do up to 80% of agricultural workOf these, 33% are agricultural workers.
For women in areas with high migration rates, owning land in their name remains a distant dream despite working long hours in the fields. The land these women cultivate does not legally belong to them. “I am the one who decides what to sow and when to sell, but when I need loans, they ask for my husband’s signature,” Kumari said. So there is a fundamental contradiction between work and property.
Effects on generations
Men of the house are absent for months, sometimes even years, and children grow up in the shadow of absence. “My son asks why his father only comes home for festivals,” says Kumari. Emotional distance has become a routine adjustment for them.
Teachers in districts with high attrition rates often report erratic attendance and declining performance, particularly among older children who are involved in farm or household work.
A 2024 study of children of internal migrant workers in Delhi found that 23.8% of children between the ages of 6 and 14 live in migrant households lost the opportunity to go to schoolThis means that they practically did not go to school or their attendance was very disrupted.
For children, migration is increasingly no longer an event, but a legacy. Sons begin to witness their fathers leaving before sunrise and returning only during harvest season, and gradually develop the belief that migration is the only way out.
Girls, on the other hand, often perceive the consequences differently because they enter the care role much earlier than they should. Older daughters cook, look after younger siblings and help their mothers with work on the farm.
Emotional stress is rarely expressed publicly. “When I come home, my children hesitate around me for the first few days,” says Rakesh Kumar, a migrant factory worker in New Delhi. “I send them money every month, but sometimes I feel like I missed out on their growing years.” In many families, remittances help maintain education and survival.
However, absence alters family relationships, with fathers becoming distant providers and mothers becoming overwhelmed anchors. Children learn early that care and sacrifice are often measured by distance.
*Name changed at individuals request
Aditya Ansh is a freelance media writer based in South Asia. His works have been featured in Mongabay, The Hindu, Indiaspend, etc.
Bhaavya Kashyap is an independent writer based in South Asia.
